The worlds of location technologies

This book offers the first international account of location technologies (in an expanded sense), and brings together the best of the available international scholarship on these technologies and their various cultures of use within the Global South. A key aim of this collection is to open up discussion on what location technologies are exactly, what forms they take in different places, what their uses and patterns of consumption are, and what implications they might hold for research, policy, businesses, organizations, governments and communities. The pieces gathered together here prompt us to ask, how, within the Global South, do location technologies differ across national markets, geo-linguistic communities and cultural contexts? What are the contrasting, or shared, meanings and practices associated with location technologies in particular societies, or among particular groups of users? And, what innovative practices and new, or reinvigorated, theory may emerge from attention to the Global South? In exploring these questions, the collection seeks to contribute to our understanding of social, cultural, gendered and political relations on a global and local scale. It also seeks to encourage further, future work that continues to examine how location technologies have developed in different national contexts, what their different histories are that have influenced and continue to influence their present forms, and what the specific cultural, economic and political economies are that have shaped location technologies in countries within the Global South.